Specifically but not exclusively, the invention can be usefully applied to controlling the entry and exit of vehicles or pedestrians through a given area, for example an area with payment for parking or transit, like a car park, a private road, or a zone with limited access.
The prior art comprises parking columns provided with a printing apparatus that is usable for managing the car park by means of parking permits in the form of printed tickets. The printing apparatus is able to emit a parking permit (i.e. print an entry ticket to the car park) and to read the parking permit (validating the ticket at the exit from the car park).
The printing apparatus is connected to the computerised central system controlling the car park or another system with barred access, to act in a coordinated manner with the various actuators and sensors of the car park, such as, for example, a closing bar, traffic lights, a ticket request pushbutton, a motor vehicle sensor, an automatic payment point, etc.
Known printing apparatuses, used in parking columns, nevertheless have the problem of requiring complex hardware configurations for installing in the entry/exit management system for managing controlled access to the car park, in particular for the logic connection of the printing apparatus to the peripheral unit that coordinates the various operations of the entry/exit management system.
Normally in fact, an external control unit has to be provided (for example a PLC or a dedicated logic card) with the instructions necessary for operating the management system for managing controlled access to the car park. Such instructions can comprise, for example, driving the barring means (bar, gate, etc), reading signals coming from the different sensors of the system (pushbuttons, vehicle presence sensors, ticket validation sensors, etc), piloting the traffic light system, etc.